


Rumor Has It

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Cultural Differences, F/M, Gossip, Multicultural Couple, Politics, Romance, Rumor, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 18:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13863510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Roald discusses a rumor with Shinko. Set during Squire.





	Rumor Has It

Rumor Has It 

“Rumor has it that you’re training with my mother and her ladies in the morning.” Roald’s breath made fog in the wintry air as they stood on the ramparts overlooking a yard chaotic with practicing pages. He often began a conversation with a simple statement that revealed nothing of his stance. Accusation or approval could be equally veiled in his words. When Shinko mentioned this tendency to her ladies, Yuki remarked that it must be a cunning trap to ensnare the unwary who lost leash on their tongues, while Haname took a more charitable view, suggesting it was the prince’s way of uncovering hidden thoughts and feelings to avoid trampling them when he spoke. 

“Would such a rumor be scandalous if it were true, Your Highness?” Shinko shot him a sidelong glance, thinking that if he could probe her before revealing anything, she could respond with the same obliquity. 

“If the wagging tongues believed it would be scandalous to me, they would’ve told me sooner.” Roald’s gloves tightened around a gargoyle. “I do find it peculiar that I had to hear it through the court gossips and not from you or Mama, assuming it’s true, of course.” 

“A women must have her secrets.” Shinko folded her hands together so he wouldn’t see them shaking in her gloves. The queen had agreed to keep her secret, allowing Shinko to confide in Roald when she judged the proper time had come. To Shinko, the proper time might never come, but she hadn’t shared that with her future mother-in-law. 

“I don’t know why you’d have to keep your training secret from me, Your Highness.” Roald shook his head in what seemed to be genuine puzzlement. 

“It wasn’t so much a secret from you as it was from Prince Eitaro.” Shinko tilted her face to hide behind her curtain of hair and didn’t mention that she hadn’t shared her secret with her prince because while he was the son of a warrior queen, he was also the son of a king who had put Kel on probation and refused to allow Princess Kalasin to become a knight. Roald was scrupulously fair even when it disadvantaged him but most of his ideas of what constituted fairness were rooted in tradition and a strict sense of duty. He seemed to respect her strategic insights, but such knowledge could be acquired from books and didn’t necessarily require learning how to fight. He might support a warrior friend but not a warrior wife, not that Shinko wanted to be a warrior wife. She just didn’t want to give up her self-defense as she had surrendered so much else when she had come to Tortall to marry him. “He thought I should stop training with my glaive to avoid offending you, but I couldn’t give that up, Your Highness.” 

“Not even for me?” Roald arched an eyebrow, and Shinko wondered if he was testing her loyalty in revenge for the secret she had concealed from him. 

“If you command me to stop training, I will.” Shinko would obey her future husband even if she hated his command. Being promised to a man sometimes meant forsaking every other identity. “Is that your command?” 

“No.” Roald’s sigh was a gray cloud. “I’ll never command you to do anything, much less something that forces you to give up an essential part of who you are. I just wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me about your training. I’d hoped that you’d believe by now that you’d have my support in this and in all else.” 

“A woman must have her secrets,” repeated Shinko, soft as the snow in the crenelations. “Her secrets are her treasure and her power.” 

“Is that a challenge, Your Highness?” Roald’s lips were twitching into the beginning of a grin, and Shinko felt a shiver of pleasure tingle her spine at tickling him with her words, a Yamani proverb he wouldn’t have recognized but that she had memorized since she could talk. 

“No, merely a mystery.” Shinko’s tone was serene but her eyes glistened like the sun shining on the snow. 

“Rumor has it that I can solve any mystery if I’m stubborn enough.” Roald’s grin stretched across his face, and Shinko flushed inside at the notion of being an enigma he had to work to understand. The idea of him contemplating her at length as a riddle was titillating though she would never shame herself by admitting that aloud. That would be another one of the woman’s secrets that she kept from Roald. “I guess we’ll find out if that rumor is true.”


End file.
